Emerging trends in quantitative pharmacometric modelling

Organizers:

Stuart Johnston (The University of Melbourne), Matthew Faria

Description:

Mathematical models that describe how therapeutic agents interact with biological systems are playing an increasingly vital role in the development of novel drugs. Regulatory agencies, such as the FDA, now recognise the predictive power of accurately developed, calibrated, and validated models in the drug approval pipeline. By combining models and experimental data of pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, we can generate predictions of drug efficacy and safety. However, the majority of research in pharmacometrics focuses on traditional small molecule drugs. Novel therapies are moving beyond this paradigm towards targeted and personalised approaches. Accordingly, we require models capable of describing the more complex and detailed interactions between the therapy and biological system of interest. Moreover, we must ensure that the relevant biological parameters and metrics can be identified and estimated from experiments. In this session, we will hear about recent developments in quantitative pharmacometrics that combine approaches from pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic modelling, quantitative systems pharmacology, computational statistics and machine learning to develop quantitative pipelines for establishing the efficacy and safety of next-generation therapeutics.